Congratulations! I also read a brief Korean version of it on Naver too. Though it only mentioned your name without your blog URL, but most importantly you are on the front page of New York Times. Well done 🙂

Anonymous

Saw your blog through the NYT link. Congrats! I’m stuck in Tucson, Arizona, which has great Mexican food and that’s it has made me incredibly homesick for something spicy and fried, like Cajun, Korean, anything…. Your blog is great. Thanks for writing it. Now, if Another Flying Chicken wants to open an outpost, I’d be heading the line every day.

Gdog

Nice article, you’ve hit the big time, Joe! Just a tidbit for the other readers, I was also contacted for an interview but she never called me. Oh well, let’s give it up to ZenKimchi!

While there’s a sizeable Korean community here in the Seattle area, I don’t think that there’re any Korean-style fried chicken joints – so my big disappointment is the lack of any recipes to go with the article. The combination of spicy fried chicken, pickles, and soju sounds quite delicious…

Cho-Yau

Hey I have a question,

I’ve been combing the internet for this Manhattan-Based Bon Chon Chicken, but I can’t seem to find it!

It’s a Fried Chicken AND Karaoke Lounge?! Does anyone know the address of this mystical place?!e-mail me at [email protected] if you do!!

jerry

I was wondering if you know where Unidentified Flying Chicken is in Jackson Heights I’ve been looking for it everywhere. If you do please email me [email protected]

So true. As crazy as Korea can get, it gets in your blood. It’s like taking a bath in ice water. Wakes you up.

Hanna

hello—i’m a totally random stranger who happened to click on the newyorktimes article for your zenkimchi website. i’m very impressed by your descriptions, pictures, and enthusiasm for food. more than just the typical blathering about a person’s day, you really did a good job of incorporating a western’s introduction to korea with its most familiar cultural ambassador, native food.

Yay Joe! I’ve posted the link to the NYT article all over MySpace and am showing it off at work today. I’m so proud of you! My celebrity brother!

pepero

so glad I read the NYTimes 🙂 I’m a recovering English teacher (2 years in seoul) living in Canada again, and man do I miss the food! I’m happy to find a blog where I can reminisce and talk with other dokbokki aficionados. mm, dokbokki… I miss drunken to-se-te consumption at three in the morning..

Se-Won

You should write Eomook(어묵) instead of odeng(오뎅) because it’s japaneese language. ^^;

When Joe McPherson moved to Seoul in 2002, he thought he was leaving fried chicken behind.

“Living in the southern US, you think you know fried chicken,” he said. But in Seoul, he said, “there is a mom-and-pop chicken place literally on every corner.” Many Asian cooking traditions include deep-fried chicken, but the popular cult of crunchy, spicy, perfectly nongreasy chicken — the apotheosis of the Korean style — is a recent development.

Platters of fried chicken are a hugely popular bar food in South Korea — like chicken wings in the US, they are downed with beer or soju, after work or after dinner, rarely eaten as a meal.

“Some places have a very thin, crisp skin; some places have more garlicky, sticky sauces; some advertise that they are healthy because they fry in 100 percent olive oil,” said McPherson, an English teacher, who writes a food blog called zenkimchi.com/FoodJournal.

“Suddenly there will be a long line outside one chicken place, for no apparent reason, and then the next week, it’s somewhere else.”

For crunch, American-style fried chicken relies on a thick, well-seasoned crust, often made even thicker by soaking the chicken pieces beforehand in buttermilk.

Korean-style fried chicken is radically different, reflecting an Asian frying technique that renders out the fat in the skin, transforming it into a thin, crackly and almost transparent crust. (Chinese cooks call this “paper fried chicken.”) The chicken is unseasoned, barely dipped in very fine flour and then dipped into a thin batter before going into the fryer. It is only seasoned after frying.

Korean-style fried chicken restaurants are springing up throughout the US.